


Dog days are over

by SquaresAreNotCircles



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Coda, Getting Together, Humor, M/M, Matchmaking, Post-Episode: s10e04 Ukuli'i Ka Pua Onaona I Ka Mau'u, i would tag this as crack treated seriously but it’s a very dry kind of crack, more like powdered cocaine really, steve and danny are perfectly matched stubborn assholes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-16 17:56:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21275324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SquaresAreNotCircles/pseuds/SquaresAreNotCircles
Summary: “All I’m saying is you could meet the love of your life right here in this park! You could walk right into them-” Their shoulders bump as Danny sidesteps a steaming pile of dog poo. “Sorry, my bad.” He clasps Steve’s arm for a moment to keep them steady before moving back to his own half of the footpath. “Where was I? Right. You could walk right into them and not even know it. You get my point?”Steve squints at Danny suspiciously.Or: Steve and Danny return to the dog park from 10x04.





	Dog days are over

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote a coda for 10.04 and finished it! :D This might not sound very shocking – I finish things sometimes, it’s a thing I do – but oh boy, you should see my WIP document. I started writing and discarded five different approaches to this episode before eventually coming back to this one with a slightly different idea of what it should be, which helped it along.
> 
> The title is also the title of a song by Florence + The Machine. Dog days can mean either the hottest days of summer or a period of stagnation and inactivity (or both), and obviously Steve and Danny are literally spending their days at a dog park, so take this title any way you want, because I think they pretty much all work.

There’s a before and an after Eddie gets bitten, but they’re both pretty much the same. The differences can be spotted, but they’re subtle: Eddie is perhaps a little less energetic, Steve has one more memory of a bad first date with an otherwise amazing woman, and Danny has dialed his crazed determination to get Steve back into the dating game up to a new, even scarier level, which does not seem to exclude the use of force if deemed necessary. Steve is not even sure how all three of them ended up at the dog park again. Maybe Danny chloroformed and kidnapped him.

Maybe he went almost willingly after some weak sputtering about Eddie’s mental health that Danny countered by saying it’d be good for Eddie to revisit the place of his trauma and come to terms with it.

Whatever it is, it leads to Eddie trotting through the park like nothing could ever bother him, and Steve trying very hard to draw on whatever power it is that allows his dog to be that level of blasé, because Danny keeps defending his methods even when nobody is actively attacking them. 

“All I’m saying is you could meet the love of your life right here in this park! You could walk right into them-” Their shoulders bump as Danny sidesteps a steaming pile of dog poo. “Sorry, my bad.” He clasps Steve’s arm for a moment to keep them steady before moving back to his own half of the footpath. “Where was I? Right. You could walk right into them and not even know it. You get my point?”

Steve squints at Danny suspiciously. 

“What’s up with your face?” 

Steve leans into his squint a little harder. Just on principle, but also to distract from any other faces he could accidentally pull while saying what he’s about to say. “How’s Rachel doing these days?”

“This is not about me,” Danny says, and grabs Steve’s wrist to drag him in the straightest possible line across the grass to the first woman he’s deemed Acceptable McGarrett Dating Material.

*

They crash and burn pretty epically.

“Okay,” Danny asserts, once the woman and her Van Gogh yoga pants are far enough out of sight to be nothing more but a faintly uncomfortable memory. “So one woman misunderstood why I was talking you up and thought we were gay for each other. No big deal. That happens all the time.”

Steve picks up Eddie’s tennis ball from the spot where Eddie dropped it and lets it fly in a comfortable arch in a direction where there are no English Mastiffs. Eddie, who is still recovering and yet patiently tagging along despite not even understanding the words Danny is saying to justify all of this, is the real trooper here. 

Steve turns to Danny when Eddie is on his way back to them. “What does Rachel think about how much time you spend chasing women these days?”

“I’m not chasing women, Steve.” Danny tuts. “I’m chasing you.”

Steve stares at the shaved side of Danny’s head.

Danny looks at him, stares back for a second and then lurches into motion again. He shakes a hand in impatience. “To make you get your ass into gear. You know what I mean. Come on, keep up.” Steve is kind of forced to, because Danny takes him by the shoulder and gives him a good push in the direction of the next prey he’s spied.

*

“Alright.” Danny says it confidently, like there has been no setback whatsoever and this is all part of his grand masterplan. “Two women thought we were together. That’s not that bad of a number, if you think about it.”

Steve has to force himself not to look back at the curly blonde and her Cockapoo who are probably still right behind them, watching them walk away. She’s probably relieved. Steve would be, if he could just send Danny away when Danny is in this mindset. “Two out of two?”

“A fluke,” Danny insists. “Statistically insignificant.”

Steve nods. “So, Rachel-”

“This is not about me, remember?”

“That’s okay. I didn’t ask about you, I asked about Rachel.”

Danny does not seem to take that as a valid argument. Instead he points at a perfectly nice woman sitting at a picknick table eating what looks like a jar of peanut butter all by herself – either Danny is getting desperate, or Steve missed some health craze – and he body checks Steve off the trail to steer them her way. 

*

“So three-”

Steve sighs.

*

After strike three, Danny graciously allows both Eddie and themselves a little break from failing at chatting up women.

“Rachel?” Steve asks, when it occurs to him that he hasn’t in a while. He doesn’t even try to couch the question in an actual sentence anymore, because his meaning will get across whether he attempts subtlety or not. Not is easier.

Danny frowns at the dry grass, kicks at it, and then frowns up at Steve. He thankfully refrains from kicking Steve for the time being. “What’s this sudden interest in how my ex-wife is doing? Do you want to date _her_?”

Steve represses a shudder, because that probably wouldn’t go over well. _Danny_ dated her. Is dating her. Maybe. “No. I just like to know what’s happening in your life.” He pastes on his most disarming, don’t-kick-me expression. “I care, Danny.”

Danny rolls his eyes. “Okay. That’s good.”

“It is?”

“Yes. Makes me feel all warm and tingly inside.” Danny says it so drily that the warm tingliness he’s describing could just as soon be a rash, but Steve knows what he means. After nine years, he’s not fooled by a little aloofness.

“And Rachel?” he asks, smelling victory, but still uncertain it’s really his.

Danny hesitates. There’s a short but noticeable second before he finally comes out with, “She does not. Anymore.”

That’s good enough for Steve. Warm and tingly feelings unfurl in his chest, newly freed of at least one major burden.

*

The fourth time Danny spots a random woman going about her day that he thinks Steve will think is hot for whatever reason, Steve digs in his heels. He doesn’t budge when Danny attempts to first prod and then bully him in the right direction. 

“What?” Danny asks, easily annoyed.

“Danny,” Steve says, with great difficulty. “Did you know this part of the park is a popular gay cruising spot at night?”

It’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it, but Danny definitely glances around them. He seems to realize quickly that there’s not going to be a sign saying _this is where lonely, often closeted gay men go to anonymously find other guys who are desperate enough they’re willing to break indecent exposure laws for a quick fuck_. “This is not the time for interesting Hawaii facts, Steve,” Danny says, like this is just a stop on a sightseeing tour. “We’re busy getting you a date.”

“Yes,” Steve agrees. “And I’m just saying that means men come here and walk around until they bump into someone-” Steve deliberately takes a step too close to Danny, bumping his elbow into Danny’s bicep.

“Not literally, Steve, that’s not how it-” Danny tries to say, but Steve takes a page out of Danny’s own book and ignores valid critique.

“-and then they hope they’ve found a willing partner.”

Danny eyes him. “For sex.”

“Yeah.”

“I am not having casual sex with you.”

Outwardly, Steve smiles placidly. Inwardly, a party horn is going off and he’s being showered in confetti while he fistpumps. That’s a very specifically worded sentence, and there’s a lot of stuff it doesn’t rule out. “Well, good. Because that’s not what I want from you.”

Danny shakes his head. He doesn’t appear particularly shocked or bewildered or even just surprised. “That implies you do want something from me.”

“You were the one who said I could walk right into the love of my life and not even know it,” Steve reminds him.

Danny hmms. “Doesn’t seem applicable. You clearly do know it.”

And that’s so very Danny Williams of him, to leave Steve hanging for the briefest of moments in between those two sentences. Steve’s heart clenches and unclenches and he rolls his eyes at it as much as Danny. “Can we get out of here and go home now? Please?”

“Eddie does look tired,” Danny offers, instead of just saying _yes, Steve, that’s a good idea_.

*

“I thought you liked a measured, unhurried approach to dating,” Danny says, after. It’s not that different from before, except that now when Danny inevitably brings up Steve’s dating life, Steve does not immediately want to crash the Camaro into a tree. That’s a good thing, because they have Eddie in the backseat.

“I thought you weren’t afraid of striking out,” he volleys back, because two can play that game. They need to, even. That’s how dating works.

Danny moves a hand back and forth in a way that somehow communicates that Steve is wrong. “That’s for the Maria Giardanos of the world. You know, the pretty ones I don’t really know, where I don’t have any real emotional investment. Do you know how much ice cream I’d need to eat if I asked you out and you said no? I’d go bankrupt. Grace’s college fund would need to be tapped.”

Steve keeps a very serious face, because this is a very serious matter. “Well, that’d be bad.” 

“Yes.” More handwaving, now in a manner that visibly agrees with Steve. “It definitely would.”

“I’d better not say no, then.”

For this, Danny even deigns to nod and touch Steve’s shoulder. “Good. I’m glad we’re agreed on that.”

Steve, finding himself eager to not say no to Danny soon, puts a little more pressure on the gas pedal.

**Author's Note:**

> I appreciate you, person who read this, and if you feel like leaving a comment, I would appreciate that, too. ❤
> 
> I’m on Tumblr as [itwoodbeprefect](https://itwoodbeprefect.tumblr.com), or with my exclusively H50 (and mostly McDanno) sideblog as [five-wow](https://five-wow.tumblr.com).


End file.
